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Given recent developments....

This is my shocked face.

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http://www.dw.de/greece-tallies-up-the-wwii-reparations-bill/a-18224874

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After today's developments (the meeting between Greece's new Economics Minister and the head of the Eurogroup, in which each side was talking past each other), it seems that Greece is deliberately trying to pick a fight. Basically, the Economics Minister, Varoufakis, told the EU to take its next tranche of bailout money and shove it up its ass.

I think I know where this is going. There's a segment of the Greek Left (as well as a segment of the Greek Right) that wants to ditch the euro and go back to the drachma. Likewise, there are voices in the rest of the EU that would like to kick Greece out of the euro. But surveys show that some 70% of the Greek public wants to stay in the euro "at all costs," and Tsipras won the election partly by assuring people that he would keep Greece in the euro. So he can't just up and exit on his own. If he insists on rolling back the austerity agreements (which was also part of his pre-election promises), then he can put the onus on the EU for the exit. The Tsipras government is even talking about a referendum, if push comes to shove, in which the people would be asked if they want the euro with continued austerity and unemployment, or the drachma with loose purse strings and full employment. When stated in those terms, I think the drachma would win.

Note also that EU membership is not synonymous with eurozone membership. The are countries in the EU (the UK, Denmark, Sweden, and some of the new members in eastern Europe) that don't use the euro currency. EU membership is good for Greece (because it allows Greeks to work in, say, Germany, without formalities), while the euro has proven to be a disaster for Greece.

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It will be interesting to see how the Eurocrats counter Tsipras.

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IIRC, isn't the new Greek government communist?

Well the one they had last Tuesday was....Who's to say about next Tuesday.

Greece threatens to veto EU Russia sanctions

Putin is no fool. He understands, much more clearly than Berlin does, just what a hammer blow the euro disaster has dealt to the entire structure of the enlarged, post-1990 European Union. He understands that Berlin’s leadership of the continent has lost legitimacy across the south, and further he believes that Berlin is too shortsighted and constrained to undertake the kind of policy that could still save the euro and the EU.

Putin also understands the fragility of the EU’s accomplishments beyond western Europe. EU bureaucrats and German diplomats don’t think culture matters as they build a multicultural and cosmopolitan New Europe from Dublin to Dubrovnik and from Sweden to Sicily. Putin thinks they are wrong, and when he looks at current conditions in Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy and Spain he sees the full confirmation of his theory. Europe, he believes, is not a country–and even if it were, it is not a German country.

Germany, he believes, is trying to build a Europe in defiance of the facts–and Germany lacks both the resources and the will to push this project indefinitely as its difficulties grow. Germany will not, Putin may well believe, find a way to turn the euro disaster around. The south will continue to fester and stew under an increasingly hateful and damaging system. Germany will also not be able to turn the Balkans into an orderly and quiet garden of Nordic and Teutonic virtues.

The key to Putin’s thinking is that he is betting less on Russian strength than on German and therefore Western weakness. In opposing the consolidation of a German Europe, he is betting on German failure more than he is betting on Russian success. The goal of Russian policy in Ukraine, for example, is not to create a new Ukraine in Russia’s image. It is not to conquer Ukraine–but to demonstrate that the East is indigestible. Germany cannot save Ukraine or organize Ukraine. It doesn’t have the money, the military culture or the political skills to convert this particular sow’s ear into the silk purse of a North Atlantic market democracy. Germany cannot save Ukraine when the price of oil is at $100 per barrel; it cannot save Ukraine when the price of oil is $25 per barrel.

But if Germany cannot save Ukraine at any price of oil, it also cannot reform Greece, Italy and Spain at any value of the euro. Putin doesn’t see his job as one of building up a powerful force to counter a rising Germany. He sees his job as being able to take advantage of the coming failures and catastrophes of what he believes to be the grandiose and unsustainable Western project in Europe.

oh please. its fucking a communist party by anyone but an idiot's standards.

their platform is completely communist. they just lie to the masses and the morons.

ANTARSYA was founded on 22 March 2009 in Athens by 10 organisations and independent militants involved in the Radical Left Front (MERA) and United Anti-Capitalist Left (ENANTIA) with the exception of the Workers Revolutionary Party (???). These organisations come from different left wing currents ranging from ex-Communist Party (KKE) and KKE Interior members to Maoism and Trotskyism.

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Russia is also saying it will finance Greece.  If Greece goes, Germany may quit the Euro too.

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The EU is on borrowed time.

No country in debt wants to pay what they owe. They elect the commie fuckstick party, who promise to wipe out the debt and carry on with the free shit bonanza. Commie fucksticks flip off creditors, delete all freedom from former citizens, now subjects.

How long before creditors start taking it out of these commie fucksticks hides?

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The EU is on borrowed time.

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The interesting development in this, over the weekend, is that the U.S. has belatedly realized what Putin is doing in cozying up to the Greeks. Obama has joined the bidding war by making a strong statement on behalf on Greece in his interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria.

http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/02/01/pres-obama-on-fareed-zakaria-gps-cnn-exclusive/

Basically, Obama is telling Merkel not to try to "squeeze blood from a stone."

The Greek Finance Minister, Varoufakis, is making a whirlwind tour to France, Britain, and Italy to try to put together an anti-German front. Tsipras will visit Cyprus, Italy, and France in the next few days as a followup. This all leads up to the European Summit on Feb. 12.